Dehydrated microbial culture devices are known which rely on guar and other natural gums as cold soluble gelling agents. Natural gums work well in most applications and have superior gelling characteristics compared to other cold soluble polymers. Disadvantages of the use of natural gums include that some organisms are able to metabolize the natural gum's sugar chains, resulting in at least some liquefaction of the plate. Further, natural gums tend to break down under levels of ionizing radiation typically used to decontaminate or sterilize a plate.
Hence, there remains a need for devices for propagation or storage of microorganisms that provide features such as increased resistance to organism metabolism, ionizing radiation, etc.